Content marketing strategies are about getting the right information to the right people at the right time. Recent studies have shown that the majority of readers only get through about 60% of a piece of content.
It’s essential to have effective content in place that addresses what the audience wants. The trick is getting people to actually read your content. Consumers are spending more time researching before they make purchases, and brands can use content to provide the answers.
What Content Marketing Strategies Will Do for You
The right content will make your brand memorable and encourage consumers to choose your brand when they are ready to make a purchase. It’s important to answer questions, but you need to do so in a way that tells a story and grabs your audience’s attention.
Boring content results in readers leaving your site before they even get to the important information. It eliminates your chance of the reader using you as a trusted resource in the future. In essence, your content strategy is more important than trying to make your content go viral.
Powerful content marketing strategies will bring in new customers, educate users, drive revenue, and help build a strong brand. Careful planning and results-driven tactics are what really make your content soar. Here’s a list of the best strategies you can use in any industry.
1. Get to the Point
Nothing will turn potential consumers away as quickly as paragraphs of text that don’t provide any real value or insight. You need to write as you speak and get straight to the good stuff.
You should write your content in a way that is easy for your audience to understand. Never use business jargon that makes it difficult to get through. The key to great content is being conversational and informal.
2. Don’t Overwhelm Your Audience
Written content should look easy to read, even if you’ve got a complex and fascinating topic. You can easily overwhelm your audience members by throwing too much information at them. There is also a good chance that your quality level will take a plunge if you try to do too much in your content.
It’s difficult to keep a standard of quality when you are focused on providing excessive amounts of information. Break your text into small and easy to read paragraphs to ensure readers feel more comfortable taking on difficult content.
3. Add a Bit of Humour
Adding a little humour to your content can add life to an otherwise boring and mundane topic. Humour can also be an effective way to build personal connections with your target audience. One of the best tools is to adopt a tongue-in-cheek conversational style.
Keep it natural and throw in references to pop culture, or leverage ridiculous images to get your audience’s attention. The best part is that humour is contagious. When we see something funny, we want to share it with someone, which means that you can use humour to increase your following.
4. Always Remember Visual Appeal
Less is more when it comes to words on a page. Get creative and use pictures, graphs, icons, videos, or photos to tell your story. Interesting content always engages consumers, meaning that they are more likely to interact with your content if it adds value.
It’s common knowledge that videos and images are more appealing than pages full of text, so always use visual appeal to enhance the user experience.
5. Helpful Content Is Not Necessarily Boring Content
Focus on providing genuinely helpful information. Content creation is all about perspective. Generally speaking, “boring” content won’t actually be boring to the people who need it. Always ask yourself what you would want to read if you were looking for information.
Think about what you want your audience to learn from your content, what the most important point to take away from your content is, and how someone who reads your content would describe it to someone else.
6. Be Specific
At the intersection of being helpful and getting to the point is writing with a specific focus in mind. For example, if you sell pet food, your audience is probably interested in learning about pet health and nutrition.
Your aim should be to cross your industry expertise with your audience’s interests. Your content will be far more helpful if you focus on specific scenarios and examples that relate to your followers. Each piece of content should have one clearly defined purpose – no more and no less.
7. Concise Use of Words
It pays off to invest in a professional editor who knows how to grab the audience’s attention in few words. You want someone who can say what needs to be said in 20 words, rather than 100. Your online audience doesn’t have time to waste cutting through clutter.
In other words, your followers don’t want to read a paragraph when all that’s needed is a sentence. Every unnecessary word you use only dilutes your content and takes away from your message’s meaning. Remember to keep it short and sweet. Keeping your writing concise is the key to success.
8. Use Relatable Analogies to Explain Complex Concepts
Readers will quickly steer away from content that they deem to be confusing. You need to explain complex topics in a relatable way in order to keep your audience’s attention. If you work in a complicated industry, it’s smart to simplify your message.
Use straightforward analogies and eliminate any complex jargon in order to explain your concept in a way that’s easy for your readers to understand. This is especially important when your target audience members are not subject matter experts.
9. Conduct Interviews with Interesting People
People are far more open to information conveyed by authority figures or celebrities who can speak on specific topics.
Find people in your niche who have some influence, and ask them to conduct an interview with you. Interviews with experts are a great way to gain brand trust, generate a genuine interest from your target audience, and convey in-depth and valuable insights into your brand.
10. Be Controversial
A great way to increase organic traffic and build engagement is by writing controversial content while backing up your opinions. People are often eager to listen and respond to controversial topics, regardless of whether or not they agree with you.
The “shock” factor is a great way to draw attention to your brand. Controversial content is very effective for getting the conversation going, and it encourages people to interact with your brand.